Separate Browsing and Download History

Categories

(Firefox :: Preferences, defect, minor)

For bugs in Firefox Desktop, the Mozilla Foundation's web browser. For Firefox user interface issues in menus, bookmarks, location bar, and preferences. Many Firefox bugs will either be filed here or in the Core product. Bugs for developer tools (F12) should be filed in the DevTools product. (more info)

When I updated to Firefox 21, I realised that the "Clear History when Firefox Closes" pref. has been updated. As you can see in the screenshot, the download history setting is greyed out. However, it automatically ticked itself when i clicked on "Browsing History". This is giving me the impression that the Browsing History pref. controls the Download History as well.
In older versions of Firefox, the Browsing and Download Histories are seperate. I previously set my Firefox download history to delete itself when Firefox closes, but now that feature is gone. To a privacy-oriented user, this pref should remain seperate to allow maximum configurability and security. (That's why this is a minor bug... its not that important but should be fixed since many users update without realising that their download history is not deleted on exit)
Or is this just a bug for my PC only?

>> In older versions of Firefox, the Browsing and Download Histories are separate.
Note that this part is not true. Even though the options were separate in older versions, what was deleted was the history in the Downloads window, but the actual download history (which is kept in the Library) was never touched. People just didn't know about it.

Well, I believe that in never versions of Firefox there should be seperate settings for deleting browsing and download history when Firefox is closed. Some people just want to delete one and not the other.

+1 for this requirement.
I NEED to delete the Download history and I don't want to delete the Browsing history. The Download history raises much more privacy questions than the Browsing history. Having both merged is a regression.

(In reply to BGzilla from comment #0)
> This is giving me the
> impression that the Browsing History pref. controls the Download History as
> well.
that's exactly what happens
> In older versions of Firefox, the Browsing and Download Histories are
> seperate.
this is untrue, they look separate, though they are not, and that always created privacy issues.
> I previously set my Firefox download history to delete itself when
> Firefox closes, but now that feature is gone. To a privacy-oriented user,
> this pref should remain seperate to allow maximum configurability and
> security.
Maximum configurability is an abstract concept, what's configurability for when there is no use-case associated?
Not sure what's the security issue, maybe you meant privacy, I can tell you unifying these 2 increases privacy, even if it looks the opposite.
This was done on purpose, so the bug as-is is wontfix. If you have compelling reasons to support keeping them separated it will be interesting to hear about those, if your only reason is to be able to clear downloads history on shutdown, apart from history, then you probably want to check bug 838681.

ps: note that even clearing downloads history won't clear history that brought you to that download, I'm not sure why you say that "Download history raises much more privacy questions than the Browsing history" when anyone can just look into your history the page where you downloaded from.

You need to log in
before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.